Readers Report
I live at 1001 President Street which is exactly across the street from 1010 President street. I can relate to a lot of the things in the 1010 story I would love to write something like this for my building today and what it is like today. How would I go about doing that? Thanks.
Yes! I would love something about your building today. Just e-mail anything in that you'd like to share with the world. [DNM]
23 April 1997
My Brooklyn actually WAS 1010 President St. We lived there from about 1950-1963 and then we moved around the corner to 993 Carroll St. We walked to P.S. 241 and then took the bus to Lefferts J.H.S. what a great neighborhood it was then. Walking along Eastern Parkway on the holidays! We felt that the Gardens were our private territory. We knew every inch of it. Unfortunately, I've lost touch with everyone from there, since everyone eventually scattered to the four winds when we moved away.
18 April 1997
My Brooklyn is hazy post-war early childhood recollections at 563 Powell St., a '50s childhood in the neighborhood at 365 Amboy St., and coming of age in the early '60s at 636 Brooklyn Ave.
Earliest memories are the circus train coming by each spring on the tracks a block behind our house, an open air market under the El off of New Lots that we would visit Saturday nights or Sunday mornings with big slabs of lox and whitefish, and the pushcarts, open fires and Young Folks Clothing on Belmont Ave. Summers riding the El to join the hordes trekking off to Brighton or Manhattan Beach, or eating our lunches waiting for the draw-bridge to go down on the way to Riis Park, the parachute jump, the side show booths and the honky tonks at Coney island. And the magical trips on the subway to the department stores or movie palaces of Downtown Brooklyn, where the streets were mobbed at all hours of the day and night. Eating Charlotte Russes at a bakery across the street from the Pitkin theater, wandering the aisles of what seemed like the largest Jewish deli in the world—and the only one selling foot-long kosher franks—on Pitkin near Stone, the Health Dept. on Stone Ave. (for polio shots I guess) and the beginning of school at P.S. 182.
Amboy St.—life on the street—the candy store on the corner of Riverdale. Pez dispensers. Two kosher butchers, Taubers Grocery, a dairy & egg place (live chicks in the spring) on Riverdale off of Amboy. P.S. 183. Playing punchball in the school yard where hitting the fourth floor screen was a homer. Off the wall. Stoop ball. Hit the Penny. Chinese handball in the alley. Punchball & stickball on the street. Scully and scraped knuckles. Snowmen and forts in the blizzards. Thousands of kids at Betsy Head Pool in the endless summers. Mom's oblong knishes from the metal wagons. Good Humor & Bugalow Bar. Movie houses caty corner from each other on Saratoga & Lavonia—with 20 cent matinees on Saturday in one of them that went on all day. Chunkies for 5 cents (when we actually paid) on an outer display at the candy store across the street. Buying one admission to the theater & letting everyone in the side door. Kosher deli on Saratoga next to the A&P. The Famous Dairy Restaurant with blocks long lines on Sunday night & vegetable cutlets & kashe varnishkes for dinner. The stars on the roof of the Pitkin theater & the mean matron down below who kept kicking us out of the loges. Collecting Elsie ice cream sticks to get into the bleachers at Ebbets Field and night games with Furillo in right and Snider in center. David Marcus J.H.S., white flight from Brownsville, the Dodgers leave Brooklyn.
After 3 years of long subway trips to Stuyvesant, back to Brooklyn College. Al's pool hall where I heard that Kennedy had been shot. Working as a soda jerk at the luncheonette/candy store at the corner of the junction. White Castle burgers & gorging at Nathan's at 2 am. Chancellor House at BC w/poker & GIRLS. Last gasp at LIU in Downtown Bklyn before taking off in 1966 for the rest of the world & the rest of my "non-Brooklyn" life.
20 April 1997
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